China

“The cost to produce a gigawatt of nuclear power in the US today is like fifteen billion dollars. The cost in France is four, and the cost in China is one.”

“China outbuilds the US 230 to one.”

“China has 57% of total global shipbuilding capacity.”

“They built over a thousand commercial ships last year, and the United States built five. I think this was 20, 24. Five. Like one, two, three, four, Five. Large, ocean-going commercial vessels.”

“Our allies, South Korea and Japan, the next two largest shipbuilders in the world, they're actually, on the commercial side, they're actually getting a lot of their modules from China. They're getting a lot of their labor from China.”

“My hunch is like Singapore or China will probably be more likely to try to use those ideas. Say, hey, we all agree, or we at least make it very clear that this is our objective function. And then, you know, we're going to really try our best to set the various…”

“But those are not profitable ventures. Like even the Chinese government till date has not been able to break even on that. It requires a lot of capex.”

“Whatever industry India goes for, my recommendation would be, please don't compete with China.”

“I don't think China has it in, in it to beat us.”

“So after the end of the Cold War, what do we say to Russia and China? Come on in, and just as we said to Germany and Japan in 1945, benefit from the system. Actually, we waited to about 47 to do that, but in any case come on in, benefit, and now both Germany a…”

“I mean, let's imagine China declares a blockade of Taiwan, which could very easily happen.”

“A lot of Chinese energy policy can be understood as trying to avoid the trap of dependence on the global economy. So, you know, they've, they're doing the solar, they're doing as much hydro as they can, and some of our friends in the environmental movement are…”

“If our AI companies, if our tech companies can only benefit from the internal American market, that's actually not enough to generate the revenue and growth that they need, even to stay technologically equal, say to China, much less be ahead and be and be supe…”

“And I think increasingly companies are starting to realize that they need their employees to be patriotic. That is the. Your employees need to think it's an evil sin to sell IP to China, and that the, your co-workers will rat you out in a heartbeat if they thi…”

“In 1980, India's GDP was something like 60%, 65% of China's. Today it's about 17% of China's.”

“Asia's too big for China to eat. Nobody can eat it.”

“China outbuilds the US 230 to one.”

“China has 57% of total global shipbuilding capacity.”

“Their entire shipbuilding industry is completely subsidized. Not only direct construction subsidies, but they subsidize the raw materials, they subsidize the labor, and they basically give them free financing for these shipyards.”

“We being the U.S. Launch about five to 10 military, meaning destroyer, cruiser, aircraft carrier, like straight naval vessel warship. China's probably doing about 30, so six to one, seven to one, somewhere in there.”

“They built over a thousand commercial ships last year, and the United States built five. I think this was 20, 24. Five. Like one, two, three, four, Five large ocean going commercial vessels.”

“Our allies, South Korea and Japan, the next two largest shipbuilders in the world. They're actually on the commercial side. They're actually getting a lot of their modules from China. They're getting a lot of their labor from China.”

“And to be fair, 99% of American companies go into China and think they can just succeed with the same business model. And for China to operate it successfully, you need to a completely different business model, completely different team.”

“China outbuilds us 230 to one. Our naval fleet is actually shrinking and we have 0.1% of global shipbuilding capacity as a non-existent industry.”

“He's going to catch up and blow past China and the Chinese models, I think by the end of 20, 27.”

“They were selling at a discount to China. I think it was like a 20 dollar barrel discount to basically sell.”

“You know, my personal view is that it's an infinite game, I believe, first in terms of the race, that there's not going to be a winner, the race is going to be over, but you could get to a situation where a lot of the critical technologies are not U.S. Based, …”

“AI optimism in China is over 80%, meaning they pull on the question, do you think AI will be more beneficial and harmful? Over 80% of Chinese people say yes. In the US, that number is in like 30%.”

“So I've been saying for a while that the US is ahead of China in every category except one, which is optimism. And that is the biggest risk to us winning this AI race against China is doing something that will shoot ourselves in the foot because we're so pessi…”

“And then I think another aspect of this is specifically doing this in a way where part of the story is either slowing down China or cutting a deal with China such that China doesn't overtake and, you know, break this whole proposal.”

“Plan B is the branch where we try to, where the U.S. Tries to slow down China. Where the most obvious mechanisms would be things like export controls, but potentially they could get more escalatory than that. Meaning sabotage. Yeah, sabotage like, yeah, like c…”

“American scientists, Russian scientists, all sorts of scientists are going to China for some prestige, some money, and some freedom.”

“And we are going to train them up and they are going to be frighteningly good up until the point that that freedom involves Tibet, Tiananmen Square, and Taiwan.”

“They have been trying to essentially figure out how to do EV lithography since, since we put the export controls in 2019, no breakthrough has happened.”

“China was spending thirty three billion dollars a year. 2021. Six hundred and seventy billion. So China increased spending by 19 x. Over the same time period, the US increased spending by roughly three x.”

“And then separately, a lot of biotech has moved offshore from the U S for the same reason that you're pointing out, which is the FDA approval cycle. Is so long and the stages slow people down so much and China's completely revamped their rules for getting to c…”

“And yes, we will get smoked by China because they will not subject all their companies to these constraints.”

“I think there's a little bit of magical thinking, which I just invoked in terms of manufacturing and whether it be fabs, whether that be actuators, like all these sort of precursors, like the, I think the degree to which we are dependent on China is underappre…”

“But even that is a good example because Apple is not moving, truly moving out of China. Like they're diversifying to an extent, but the problem, it would just cost so much.”

“I remember the last few weeks in the negotiation, we were burning fifty two million a week in China, just on price subsidies, because there was this heated behind the scenes battle happening To get to the best economics and the ultimate sort of surrender or u…”

“When Uber and Didi did our deal we were the two largest players, but before there was a third player, I think it was called Quaddi, and Didi and Quaddi merged and they sort of merged the companies, they did a deal, you're combining HR systems, and they realize…”

“I don't think it was plausible that we were ultimately going to be the market winner. I mean, even for geopolitical reasons alone, like the notion that a U S tech company would ultimately be the largest mobility service in China. I just don't think it's someth…”

“What you learn when you go and do what we did in China is you learn that when you go and take your business and go to China, you have to start over. So many people think that you can take your business and take it somewhere, which by the way, Uber kind of like…”

“Most entrepreneurs, let's say Western entrepreneurs that go to China, that is almost none succeed... In our neck of the woods, you're like, okay, Elon definitely did, right? And Apple definitely did. Tim Apple and Elon, right? Those are the two guys.”

“At some point, probably our top 10 cities were all Chinese cities. That's wild. In rides. Yeah. Not in revenue because the rides instead of like at the, in my day, 13 bucks, 15 bucks, whatever they were, these were like three bucks, two bucks type stuff.”

“Now we eventually did get a partner, but instead of giving up 50%, we gave up, I think it was seven percent and it was to Baidu, but it was because we were getting massive regulatory heat. And as long as we had a partner by our side, we could be Chinese.”

“So we were spending, let's say tens of millions of dollars a month fighting DD in all these cities.”

“If we ban open source, if we let this control be centralized, we will lose AI, we will lose geopolitics, we will lose everything to China. It's just that Simple.”

“These EA types thought they're gonna institute global compute governance. Somehow they're gonna get, like, Some global agreement with China. Total pipe dream. Never going to happen. If we slow down, China is just going to race ahead.”

“Xi's largest export is not autos or electronics. It's the domestic economic dysfunction of China. They're crushing everybody in other countries, manufacturing base, industrial base, across the world.”

“They have more cases, WTO cases, than any other country, and all of them combined are against China.”

“As an example, their auto industry is now exporting more cars, and their profits are down 20%.”

“I happen to think, coming back from Japan, etc., That rather than have terrorists, we should have an economic block. So all of us together can withstand China to actually organize not only that economic block, but then kind of other meet them in the marketplac…”

“They've got 20 times the manufacturing square footage of the U.S., and much of it is automated.”

“China wants everybody dependent on China, and them independent of you. That is their theory of the case. You, our markets are going to be so big and important, you can't do anything about it. You're going to be dependent, your economy, on our markets. We're go…”

“Massively invests in the life sciences, and within five years, China is not just nipping at our heels, the peripersu with the United States in life sciences. A place that the United States, outside of one or two examples in Europe, dominated.”

“Now there's three strategies. One is the economic quarantine that just suffocates Taiwan. One is an invasion that tries to end this in 96 hours, and the other one is they take over those three islands and look at the world and say, you're going to start a war …”

“And so the Chinese premier has been recently cautioning the provincial governors, stop building so many data centers because this is now the new thing.”

“I expect you'll see the same phenomenon, albeit with a little less social consequences once all of this turns out to be, it'll be much like what happened with their overbuilding in apartment buildings and residential and industrial space over the last decade.”

“In China, they're doing it for 3000 dollars a kilowatt, similar, you know, similar price points with South Korea.”